Medical devices for treating disease and symptoms of disease are well known in the art. Devices including, but not limited to, pacemakers, cardioverter/defibrillators, neurological stimulators, drug pumps, dialysis machines and ventilators may be associated with a patient suffering from an ailment and provide treatment for that ailment. Many such medical devices are actively controlled by electronics and are programmable, either to provide a constant treatment or to sense and adapt to patient conditions. These sorts of medical devices commonly, then, incorporate electronics to record patient data and diagnose patient conditions.
But the scope both of medical conditions and of available medical devices in the art is vast and may be very difficult for a medical professional to grasp in its entirety. The various specific ailments of each general category of medical condition may involve specific problems in each patient. Each type of medical device may include substantial numbers of variations to treat specific patient conditions. The myriad variations of each type of medical device may make the notionally straight-forward task of using a pacemaker to treat a patient suffering from bradycardia a vastly complicated task. Further, while some medical professionals receive years of training and experience to specialize in treating bradycardia, for instance, the same medical professional may not always be confronted with patient conditions solely within the medical professional's narrow expertise.
While health care systems have been developed to help consolidate the available treatment options with the known body of human ailments, such systems commonly involve either heavy reliance on general practitioners or teams of specialists analyzing individual patient conditions. While a general practitioner may have broad knowledge, and may be able to point treatment of a patient in the proper general direction, a general practitioner may not have the resources to provide a relatively highly effective medical device therapy to a patient suffering from a particular disease. Similarly, while teams of specialists may consider each patient, such teams involve substantial consumption of resources and are very expensive.